{Embrace} and {Small Style :: Birthday Girl!}

Good morning!

I am so so excited about today's post!  This has been a big work in progress for me and I am thrilled with how it turned out.  More importantly, Emilia loved it!

We celebrated Emilia's THIRD birthday this past weekend with a "Tinkerbell Party", at E's request.  The only catch was that she wanted to be Rosetta, Tinkerbell's fairy friend, because she wears pink.  My MIL found an awesome deal on a peachy colored fabric which matched our Rosetta doll's outfit perfectly, so I set out to create something fantastic. 

Emilia loves tutus and all things twirly, so I really felt the stress of perfection...haha.  Honestly, I just kind of made up the skirt as I went along...I looked at a couple tutorials for petal skirts and tutus, but ultimately, just kept playing with it until I liked it.  It didn't pass the "Twirl Test", but E still loved it!

I also took a plain white tank and added a small fabric rosette embellishment.  I didn't want anything too over-the-top and I think it turned out great!



She was also very particular about which character each family member was to dress up as...and here is our little family!  I was Tinkerbell and Jason was Terrence- Tink's boy fairy friend.  Such a good dad to get in on the fairy fun! (O:


I am excited to post all about her party details soon.  Please stop back by! (O:

As seen on Emilia:
Rosetta Skirt - Handmade by me
Rosetta Tank - Target's Circo brand plain tank, I added the embellishment
Leggings - Walmart
Wings - Amazon.com

I am linking up with two wonderfully awesome blogs today; please go check them out!:

Friends, Flowers and Fun!

How are those for 3 Fabulous F's?  Now there are 4!  ;-)

This past weekend I enjoyed a great Saturday with 10 beautiful ladies and a couple of our kiddos.  As I mentioned here, my sister, momma and I are working on a really cool quilt for me to take to Saipan this July.  My sister had the awesome idea of asking all my friends and family to be a part of this project by helping to make the fabric and/or crochet flowers to cover the front of the quilt.  What a cool idea!  I love that I'm taking little bits of my favorite people half way around the world.  It will be a great comfort to have on tough days and a pleasant reminder every day of the relationships and encouragement I have so far away.

My friend Margo, was gracious enough to open her home for our Crafty Friend Day!  We invited lots of lovely ladies to join us for a few lessons on flower making, chatting with friends, and yummy snacks.  Many of my friends were aprehensive about their levels of craftiness, but I assured them were many options that were all relatively easy.

I caught a few photos of my girls hard at work! (Erin came after I had already put my camera away, but she was there too!)  (O:

Sherry, Lacey, Margo and Michelle  (Michelle and Sherry drove 2 hours to join us!)

Elise and Jessca

Alyssa, Brooklynn, and Clare

Neely

Once we were all finished with our flowers, we laid them out on the sheet I'll be using to get an idea of what it will look like.  There are still many flowers to create, but I love how it is coming together!

On my way home after this super fun day, I really got lost in my thoughts about how thankful I am for these ladies.  God has blessed me with an amazing group of friends and it is sometimes overwhelming to think about how much we all mean to each other.  Like I said before, many of them weren't all that excited about making a flower, but they still came and tried (and Did Great!).  Because they knew it was important to me.  What God reminded me in that moment is that it doesn't matter where we live, only that we love.  I know I will use this quilt often while on Saipan and I cannot wait to get lost in fun memories of each friend who helped put this quilt together.  Once we are a little closer to completion, I hope to do another post remarking of the specialness of each and every one of these awesome ladies (and anyone else who contributes between now and then).  It will be a great reminder of the great people in my life.  While I may not be blessed with a good enough memory, I am Totally blessed with the best of friends!!

Fabric Flowers for Saipan Quilt (PDLB)

Good morning!

I wanted to take a quick moment to post a couple cute little items I have been working on.  But first, the back story::

When I was in high school, my mom made me the coolest flannel rag quilt ever.  Bright, cheery colors, comfy, wonderful.  That was almost 10 years ago (oh, the horror!) and I still use that quilt to cuddle on the couch for a movie or when I'm going on a trip.  When I started thinking about what to take to Saipan and what to leave, I was very torn on the decision of what to do with my favorite quilt.  That old thing, holes and all, is one of my most treasured possessions, for a couple reasons.  Among the top reasons: 1- My momma made it for me and it always makes me think of her and 2- It's a comfort item that just feels like home.  So you can see my dilemma...of course I want to take it with me.  But let's face it, 85 degree weather with 80% humidity and 5 layers of flannel don't exactly mix.  I get sweaty just thinking about it!  So, my mother, my sister and I concocted a new plan and a new quilt!  This one is going to be made of two cotton sheets with a thin layer of cotton batting for sturdiness.

Check out the totally awesome front!!

My sister Pinned this quilt top as something to do for herself at some point.  She is big into crocheting and all things crafty.  As soon as I saw it, I knew it would be an really cool idea to adapt for my Saipan Quilt.  It's a little different and pretty quirky, but I'm going to a new place and will be experiencing lots of new things, so why not go out of my normal comfort zone in the quilt-world as well!?  Seeing as I have no idea how to work any types of yarn, I began a search for fabric flowers that I could add. 

Then came my sister's brilliant idea to ask all my friends and family to join in the fun.  I started asking around for volunteers to make a flower, or two, or twelve.  What a neat way to take little pieces of my favorite people with me on our exciting journey!  I've had several great responses and even have a Crafty Friend Day in the works so I can help some friends with different styles of flowers.  (Not to mention, I have all the fabric scraps we could ever need!)  That is when I started pinning fabric flowers like a mad lady.  I want to have several options for my friends to choose from.  I'm under strict orders to let them do whatever they want (my sister knows how to tame my OCD!), but I know they will need ideas and some sort of direction.  I will definitely post our success stories after CFD next month!  (O:

On to my PDLB (Pinned It, Did It, Loved It, Blogged It) portion of this post....(O:  In my abundance of free time (cough cough), I have started trying to put together a flower or two as I go.  That way by Friend Day I have a couple examples to show off, and also I won't have as much pressure to crank a ton out later.  Before I show you what I've completed so far, I have to apologize for the photo quality.  These are photos from my cell phone- I just snapped them quickly to show my mom and sister.  I will link to the Pins I found the tutorials from as well, in case you're interested in making your own fabric flowers!

This was my first flower, taken from this pin.  I let my daughter pick the fabric from my pile of coordinating colors theme (aqua, teal, blue, green, yellow, grey and white).  This was actually just a fabric I threw in there as a "maybe", but I'm really pleased with the look of it!  I still have to add a button or something to the middle, but you get the idea.  This style of flower is super simple and you really can't mess it up.  A very good beginner flower.

This is my second flower so far; I just did this one last night while watching One Day with Anne Hathaway (not her best movie...).  I used the tutorial from this pin.  I'm happy with how it turned out, but I want to try again with a jersey knit type of fabric to see if I can get it closer to the original design.  I also think I made my fabric strip a little wider than suggested, so that might be the real issue.  I haven't attached the buttons yet, and the 2 button combo looks much better in real life, I promise.

With each new flower I create, I get more and more excited about this project!  My sister tagged my in a pin this morning that I'm SUPER stoked about.  It's for some of the stems, check this out!

Obviously I really like using the LLL phrase as often as possible (shocking once you see my blog name, I know!).  I just really think it's a great reminder to enjoy life.  Anyway, I think stitching these words as part of the stems is going to be awesome.  Again, I get more and more excited with each new idea!!  More updates to come.  (O: